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The FBI [our corrupt American "Federal Bureau of Investigation"] is investigating allegations that the newly crowned
Miss Teen USA was the victim of someone who hacked into a webcam in her
Southern California bedroom several months ago in an attempt to extort
nude photographs from her.

Agents believe they have identified the person behind the alleged
"sextortion" scheme, said Laura Eimiller, spokeswoman for the FBI in Los
Angeles on Friday. No arrest has been made.

OMG, almost nude!

Cassidy Wolf, a 19-year-old graduate of Great Oak High School in Temecula [a desert ranch land east of Los Angeles], won the Miss Teen USA crown Saturday.

Wolf has said she would use her fame to highlight cybercrime, and
earlier this week told the website of NBC's "Today" show that several
months ago she received an anonymous email in which the sender claimed
to have stolen images from the camera on her home computer.

The emailer threatened to go public with images captured from Wolf's
webcam unless she would provide nude pictures of herself, Eimiller said. Instead, Wolf went the authorities.

Top priority! We'll get to the bottom of this!

"Many victims are embarrassed or keep it to themselves," Eimiller
said. "Coming forward is key to stopping the criminal activity."

[CON: It's an old scam. There were probably no serious photos to begin with with which to extort the person, but there soon would be if she shot and sent them in to stop the release of the nonexistent first set.]

Based on an investigation launched in March the FBI believes there
are more than a dozen victims in all -- from Riverside County, where
Temecula is located, and beyond, Eimiller said.

Wolf's mother told the Riverside Press-Enterprise that
her daughter was in New York, where she will attend the New York Film
Academy. A phone message left Friday by The Associated Press for the
mother was not immediately returned.

KANDY, Sri Lanka - Today, when the role of women in society is an issue of worldwide
interest it is opportune to pause to look at it from a
Buddhist perspective.

In the recent past, a number of books have been
written on the changing status of women in Hindu and Islamic societies. But with regard to women in Buddhism, ever since the distinguished Pali
scholar Miss I.B. Horner wrote her book on Women Under Primitive Buddhism, as far back as 1930, very little interest has been taken in the subject.

So let us raise again the question of whether
the position of women in Buddhist societies is or was better than that in
non-Buddhist societies in Asia.

Let us at Theravada countries Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Burma and Vajrayana/Mahayana Tibet at a time before the impact of
the West was ever felt.

Hugh Boyd came as an envoy of the British Governor at Madras, India, to the Kandy Court on the Buddhist island of Ceylon (modern Sri Lanka) in 1782. He writes (The Miscellaneous Works of Hugh Boyd, with an account of his Life and Writings
by L.D. Campbell, London, 1800, pp. 54-56):

The Cingalese [Sinhalese, Buddhist Sri Lankans] women exhibit a striking contrast to those of all other
Oriental Nations in some of the most prominent and distinctive features
of their character. Instead of that lazy apathy, insipid modesty and
sour austerity, which have characterized the sex throughout the Asiatick
world, in every period of its history, in this island they possess that
active sensibility, winning bashfulness and amicable ease, for which
the women of modern Europe are peculiarly famed. The Cingalese women are
not merely the slaves and mistresses, but in many respects the
companions and friends of their husbands; for though the men be
authorized by law to hold their daughters in tyrannical subjection, yet
their sociable and placable dispositions, soften the rigor of their
domestic policy. And polygamy being unknown and divorce permitted among
the Cingalese, the men have none of that constitutional jealousy, which
has given birth to the voluptuous and unmanly despotism that is
practiced over the weaker sex in the most enlightened nations, and
sanctioned by the various religions of Asia. The Cingalese neither keep
their women in confinement nor impose on them any humiliating
restraints.

This quote is just one taken from a series of comments
which European observers have made on the women of Sri Lanka. Many of
these European visitors to our shores came... They had
first-hand knowledge of the women in Europe and many of them came
through India having observed the women in Hindu and Islamic societies.

So their evidence is all the more valuable. The recurring comments
made by these widely traveled visitors on the women... deal[s] with condition[s] that prevailed up to the middle of the
nineteenth century. Prior to this our sources are so meager that we
cannot detect any major social changes. After this, due to the impact of
Western imperialism, commercial enterprise and Christian missionary
activity, changes in the traditional structures become
perceptible.

It is only in European writings that one finds lengthy accounts of
the social conditions prevailing in the island. The indigenous
literature, being mainly religious, lacks information regarding mundane
topics like women. More

Funny

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